Comment Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (Score 1) 92
Until today. Well ok it will be in a few weeks and be some low level public servant but the cliché will be broken nonetheless.
Comment Re: Oracle (Score 1) 146
The compatibility need is for 3rd party java code -libraries etc- not written by oracle but useful for everyone else. These libraries are written to the java api spec
Comment Re:Pareto, I hate you. (Score 1) 84
Privatisation for all those services is crap and should be prevented and undone where it has occurred.
"Privatization" and "undo" implies that these were once public utilities. They werent.
They were in Australia - hence privatisation with an "s".
Comment Re:Does *any* industry start a new union anymore? (Score 1) 761
That's hardly a fair choice
Comment Re:This is the worst argument ever (Score 2) 330
She used this argument because that's the position the pro-SOPA lobbyists took the day they realised SOPA was lost and she's been hearing it over and over ever since. The point of mentioning it now is so that by the time the protest against whatever the next bill is comes around many people will think that last time the protesters only won because they didn't know what they were talking about. So who is really poisoning the well?
Comment Corporate contract dispute != Piracy (Score 3, Insightful) 112
Someone screwed up, or misinterpreted the contract. Maybe thats the NSW Police or maybe it was an overeager MF salesperson a decade ago. Vendor says you owe us big time, org says nu-uh we'll just remove the software. Most corps and vendors settle before the lawyers get involved but occasionally things go further.
The massive beat up about the cops being untouchable and the vendor not being able to get the police to investigate themselves is complete bollocks. Seriously since when do the cops get involved in corporate contract disputes?
National media coverage of MicroFocus suing their customers is probably not a good way for them to drum up business.
Comment Re:Come on (Score 1) 525
Without copyright you don't need to force people's modifications to be released, you just copy them!
Ask Slashdot: Best Open Source Answer to Dreamweaver? 300
An anonymous reader writes "I've been looking for an open source alternative to Dreamweaver, and haven't stumbled upon anything that works the way I need. Aptana and Bluefish are fantastic tools, but I cannot work exclusively with them, since Bluefish doesn't have that WYSIWYG functionality that is so important when you're also dealing with design, and Aptana doesn't have classic ASP support. I don't care much about the classic ASP support, but, even though I'm a PHP developer, I give support to classic ASP code on a daily basis. What open source tools are you guys working with out there? I'm really not looking for a Dreamweaver clone, just a tool that gets closer to cover my needs: WYSIWYG, PHP, HTML, CSS support, and less important, classic ASP support."
Ask Slashdot: Where Can I Buy Legal Game ROMs? 361
PktLoss writes "I'm interested in building an arcade machine, following the footsteps of Cmdr Taco among many others. Not being all that interested in piracy, I need to find somewhere to buy games. StarROMs used to be the kind of thing I was looking for, though with an incredibly short catalog. The MAME people have a few available for free (non-commercial), but this isn't going to sate my needs. There's an entire cottage industry supporting this goal. People are ready to sell me plans, kits, buttons, joy sticks, glass marquees, and entire machines. That's fantastic, but where can I get the games? I refuse to believe that this entire industry is built on piracy."
Comment Lawsuit > patent lifetime (Score 1) 274
Is it really practical to have patents (or copyrights) with shorter terms than the lawsuits required to enforce them?
Comment Re:Olo:Ha (Score 1) 98
But there is a significant difference between a don't-show-message cookie and a we-know-everything-about-you cookie.
Is there?. If the cookie is persistent (survives browser close) then it just contains a big random number that might uniquely identify you. This big random number is a key to the server side database that stores everything-we-know-about-you, including the bit about you having seen the message. You have no way of knowing if that is all they are tracking.
Canadian Judge Orders Disclosure of Anonymous Posters 250
debrain writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that Google and a newspaper called The Coast must disclose all information they have about the identity of individuals who posted anonymous comments online about top firefighters in Halifax. The story in question is titled 'Black firefighters file human rights complaint,' and there are some heated opinions in the comments."
Funeral Being Held Today For IE6 194
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."
Ubuntu Desktop In the Cloud 83
jimjimovich writes "One new feature in Ubuntu 10.04 that caught my attention is the Desktop in the Cloud project. Ubuntu already has great EC2 support, and it's getting even better. Now you can launch Ubuntu Desktop instances on EC2 and connect to them with an NX client."
AU Internet Censorship Spells Bad News For Gamers 152
eldavojohn writes "Kotaku is running an investigative piece examining what internet censorship means for games in Australia. Australia has some of the most draconian video game attitudes in the world, and the phrase 'refused classification' should strike fear in game developers and publishers looking to market games there. Internet censorship may expand this phrase to mean that anybody hosting anything about the game may suffer censorship in AU. Kotaku notes, 'This means that if a game is refused classification (RC) in Australia — like, say, NFL Blitz, or Getting Up — content related to these games would be added to the ISP filter. [This would bring up] a range of questions, foremost of those being: what happens when an otherwise harmless website ... hosts material from those games (screenshots, trailers, etc) that is totally fine in the US or Japan or Europe, but that has been refused classification in Australia?' Kotaku received a comment from the Australian Department of Broadband Communication promising that the whole website won't be blocked, just the material related to the game (videos, images, etc). Imagine maintaining that blacklist!"
